Leon Uris: A God In Ruins

“Money belt.”

“You see,” O’Connell went on, “they know a lot of GIs are coming through Wright-Patterson Field loaded with back pay and that we have to be out of town soon.”

“I know you’ll protect me,” Gross said.

“Jim Beam with a Jim Beam backup.” “A couple of ladies would like to

treat you boys.” “I’ll bet they would.” “Hey, take off your pack and

stand at ease,” the bartender said. “I’m Army, myself. These are a lonely wives club. Some of them have been without for two years. Just women without men. They work at Wright Patterson

“You know,” Gross said, “I might settle in here for a few days.”

“Yeah, only after we find a Western Union and you wire home the money you’re carrying.”

“You going to stay?” Gross asked.

“No,” O’Connell answered.

“I mean, look at them, their eager little bodies twitching.”

“It’s a duty thing,” the Marine snapped.

“With me, too,” Gross said. “God would never forgive me if I just upped and ignored His perfect works of beauty.”

“I haven’t seen my sweetheart in over three years,” Dan said, becoming serious. “So pick a filly and let’s get your money home.”

With Gross on the way to wonderland on the arm of a happy sad lady with two kids, Dan O’Connell returned to MATS at Wright-Patterson Field. He had been bumped by an officer.

In a race down the train platform he got aboard a train to Pittsburgh with no time to spare for the overnight ride to New York. Dan was up before daylight, a hundred dreams all fusing. How does one play out his homecoming scene?

Siobhan Logan rushed into Dan’s arms while her brother, Father Sean Logan, remained a step behind. Scan smiled widely as they embraced. He had seen them as teenagers, young adults, same pose, only this time she screamed for joy.

Dan’s testy hip and knee made itself felt when he dropped his sea bag to en curl her and spin her about.

“Oh, Dan, your leg, I’m sorry.”

“I’m still big enough to hold up a drunk in either hand. Siobhan!

Siobhan! Oh, you are so beautiful.”

Dan spotted Father Sean advancing timidly. He wore a Roman collar.

Ordained and everything.

“Father Scan.”

“Just Scan.”

The two men were the closest of pals, and they went their separate ways—Sean to the seminary and Dan to the Brooklyn Police Academy. Both had prayed that Dan would get home. Dan didn’t embrace men. A tough handshake, a couple of slaps on the shoulder.

“I’ll take that sea bag,” Father Sean said.

“I can deal with the weight.”

“Oh, it’s not the weight, it’s your general awkwardness. See now, with your limp we’d have to attach the bag to your waist and have you drag it, or you could put it back on your shoulder and when you fall down I can pray over you and Siobhan will pass the plate.”

“All right, all right—if you’ve no respect for a wounded veteran!

Anyhow, I sent the big trunk home by Railway Express.”

“I hope it finds its way to you someday,” Father Sean said.

The Promenade along Brooklyn Heights rarely had enough benches and parking spaces these days. Dan was not the only lad from Brooklyn coming home.

“They’re talking about putting a bridge over the Narrows,” Siobhan said quickly and shakily, “to Staten Island.”

“They’ll never get a bridge over there.”

This kiss was fiercely mellow or, as Dan would say in the Marines, “The price of poker has just gone up.”

Siobhan straightened up and gulped a monster sigh. “We’re all but married in name.”

“Of course.”

“Then you are behaving stupidly.”

“What did I do?”

“It’s not what you did. It’s what you dol If we are virtually married, I want to do what married people do, now, today,” she said.

“I’ve thought about it so much,” Dan said, “that I want it to be utterly perfect, utterly. I want us to be joined by God first.” “That will take God two weeks. God may be patient, but I can’t wait that long. I’ve got a key to a girlfriend’s flat. Either we go there now, or I’m going to undress right here, right now.”

Home! The grand illusion.

Everything you remembered had to be perfect to balance the imperfections. A cop from Flatbush. Now, that was a big man in Marine eyes. The only man who really came from a perfect place was his closest and eternal buddy, Justin Quinn.

Home! Dan had forgot that his mother’s voice ranged between a squeal and shrill. Gooseflesh popped out on his skin when she argued, like someone had run chalk over a “singing” blackboard.

Home! Dan remembered those midnight-to-eight walking beats. It could be noon before he could get to the paperwork. The nights brought gunplay and gore. One of his backup partners had been massively wounded. A tot murdered in its crib, the mother’s throat slashed, and a deranged boyfriend opting to shoot it out. (“That was a bad one. Take a couple days off, Dan .”)

Home! Until he saw her again, he had clear forgotten about the wart on the end of his aunt’s chin.

Or how small and crushing the streets were.

Or how tiny his room was.

The closeness of space and people led to a repetition of life.

Now, Justin Quinn had a real home! Justin Quinn had never returned. He had been killed in Saipan, but even the night before his death he had spoken of the beauty of his father’s ranch in Colorado. It was the perfection sought by all but experienced by few.

A Marine’s life can be boring, but there is always a jazzy sparkle when he is polishing up for shore leave. He and Justin blew through the camp gates. Justin would go to waiting arms.

Dan played it straight with Siobhan for the entire time. But he was a singer and dancer and great teller of jokes. Well now, he did get into an awkward situation or two with the ladies in New Zealand, but nothing he couldn’t tell Siobhan of, at a later time.

Home. Relatives and friends who spent most of their lives stirring the pot in each other’s kitchens and salty old yarn spinners bragging about WWI, the “big” war in France and their blowout in Paree.

No Sunday came and went without a wedding or a christening. Hardly a week passed without a wake. “How many Japs did you kill, Dan?” “San Diego! That’s the end of the earth now!” “Go over your medals one more time, Dan. Which one was for getting wounded?”

“Is it true what they say about them Asian women?”

WELCOME HOME, CLAN read the banner over the entrance of the precinct station. It was a happy event, indeed. The precinct had lost five men to the war.

A big cake had been baked and several cases of Coke hustled. (Can you believe it, Dan? Coke is up to a dime a bottle.)

Dan’s new uniform came compliments of a grateful mayor. He was issued a revolver, a sweet .38 Smith & Wesson Police Special.

“You know, you can wear your military ribbons on your police uniform.

Now, what’s that one?”

“It’s called a ‘ruptured duck,” to signify you are a veteran.”

The powers that be knew Dan would not be able to take up a walking beat again. He could handle it somewhat, but he’d lose too many suspects and arrests if he had to give chase. Well, no matter, Dan O’Connell was a war hero, and they’d talk about a desk job or perhaps a patrol car and, just maybe, becoming a detective.

A rookie named Kofski was on Dan’s old beat. He put on his new uniform and bolstered his new pistol for “the walk.” Kofski was all thumbs. Dan preferred Irish cops to polacks.

“The walk” would be a sort of victory lap to reclaim the homage of his protectorate. It started as all walks started, with Dan taking an apple from the Italian vendor.